Fieseler Fi 103R, WNr. ?
History
Today, only a handful of original Reichenberg aircraft survive worldwide. One restored example is displayed at the Nationaal Militair Museum in Soesterberg, Netherlands. The museum itself opened in 2014 on the grounds of the former Soesterberg Air Base and combines the collections of the former Dutch Army Museum and Military Aviation Museum.
The Reichenberg at the museum is one of the rare surviving originals and forms part of the museum's extensive Second World War aviation collection. The aircraft is displayed alongside other German "wonder weapons," including the V-1 and V-2, helping visitors understand the increasingly desperate technological experimentation undertaken by Germany during the war's final months.
Although detailed public documentation about the specific restoration of the Soesterberg example is limited, surviving Reichenberg restorations generally involve extremely delicate work due to the aircraft's fragile wartime construction. Original airframes were built rapidly using thin steel, plywood-covered wings, and simplified fittings intended for short operational life. Restoration projects typically require extensive corrosion treatment, reconstruction of missing structural components, replacement of deteriorated wing spars and skin panels, and careful sourcing or reproduction of original cockpit instruments. A well-documented restoration of another surviving Reichenberg in the United Kingdom involved rebuilding sections of the fuselage, recovering the wings with historically correct plywood, and restoring authentic wartime instrumentation.
The Soesterberg display aircraft has also been restored for museum presentation and is notable because very few authentic Fi 103R airframes remain in existence worldwide. From November 2019, he went to the company Historic Engineering for several months for a very thorough restoration and conservation. Despite previous repainting, these images also show the beautiful original condition of the Dutch copy. During this restoration, it was fortunately chosen to return to the original layers instead of adding more layers of paint. During this process, it was also possible to discover pieces of history that were hidden under previous restorations. When repairing previous reconstruction attempts at the rudders, it turned out that these did not originally come from a Re4 but concerned the modified rudders of a regular V1. Original instructions came out on the base with the removal of paint. Although the Re4 did not have a radio on board, there was a cable to the radio on the plane carrying it. The cable and connection for this facility are still present in this copy.
Visitors frequently identify it immediately because of its unusual cockpit mounted on the recognizable V-1 fuselage. The aircraft continues to attract aviation historians and enthusiasts due to its combination of advanced engineering, political symbolism, and the moral questions surrounding suicide weapons development during the war.